Not being able to remember. Family, friends, loved ones or that anecdote you always liked to tell. Sometimes, accidents or horrible situations happen that completely change how you perceive the world and how you remember it. People with retrograde amnesia have the inability to remember parts of their past due to accidents, head trauma, illnesses or traumatic events, among others. Is amnesia absolute? What exactly is retrograde amnesia? This Psychology-Online article: Retrograde amnesia: what it is, symptoms, causes and treatment aims to glimpse this disturbing loss of memory.
What is amnesia?
Amnesia is a impairment of memory functioning. As we know, memory is a very important cognitive function that is responsible for encoding, saving and retrieving information that we have learned in the past. If you want to know if you have a good memory, you can take the .
We will therefore speak of amnesia when it is seen altered ability to retain or retrieve memories. There are two main types of amnesia: anterograde and retrograde, we will focus on the latter in this article.
What is retrograde amnesia?
The retrograde amnesia is a neuropsychological memory syndrome that involves the loss of memories or the inability to reach them. This condition usually appears after a brain injury or illness and can occur together with anterograde amnesia.
In general, retrograde amnesia affects declarative or explicit memory, that is, any memory that can be expressed in words. This amnesia affects, above all, episodic memorywhich is defined as the memories of past events, places and emotions and in autobiographical memory, which is linked to specific events in the personal life of the affected person. Within declarative memory there is also semantic memory, which is memory related to the knowledge and meaning of words or concepts; this is sometimes affected by retrograde amnesia.
On the other hand, implicit or instrumental memory, which is the memory that reflects the learning of motor skills or abilities, such as playing the piano or riding a bike, is usually preserved in cases of retrograde amnesia.
Severity of retrograde amnesia
The severity of retrograde amnesia is not always the same. amnesia itself can last minutes or hours if the injury has been minor. In more serious situations, the loss of memories can become permanent.
Regarding the lost information, in most cases, the memories that are lost are from the last events in the person’s life before the incident that caused it, which can revolve around the last hours or the last days. On other occasions, memories from remote memory are lost, with the possibility of losing the sense of identity of the person who suffers from it.
Difference between retrograde and anterograde amnesia
What is the difference between retrograde and anterograde amnesia? Retrograde and anterograde amnesia are different in terms of the area of memory it affects, as well as the origin that causes it, although sometimes they can share the same cause.
- The retrograde amnesia is the loss of previous memories to the incident that caused it.
- The anterograde amnesia is the inability to generate new memories after the incident.
Symptoms of retrograde amnesia
The symptoms of retrograde amnesia are memory loss or difficulty accessing memories. As mentioned above, retrograde amnesia limits the recovery of memories in the following areas:
- Episodic memory. More specific memories of past events, emotions or places we have been are lost. An example would be not being able to remember what happened on a specific weekend or day.
- . Memories of personal experiences can be forgotten, such as the day of your wedding, vacation adventures or, in more serious cases, childhood memories.
- Semantic memory. They forget names of cities, ideas or how to say some words.
In addition, it usually appears together with anterograde memory.
Retrograde amnesia: causes and types
The causes of retrograde amnesia are different factors. However, the vast majority of cases of retrograde amnesia are caused by lesions in the thalamus, hippocampus, or cortical and subcortical structures that are related to memory.
Damage is usually caused by craniocerebral trauma, brain infection, toxic substance abuse and some dementias among other causes. Depending on the cause of retrograde amnesia and its severity, there are different types of retrograde amnesia. Next, we will see the types of retrograde amnesia and the cause of each:
Gradually graded retrograde amnesia
This type of retrograde amnesia usually occurs with anterograde amnesia and has a gradual component in its severity. Remote memory is usually preserved while recent memory is what is affected.
Patients suffering from gradual retrograde amnesia They usually recover their memories after a while. This is because the injuries to the brain structures have not been very serious and connections with memories have been able to be recovered thanks to brain plasticity.
Gradual retrograde amnesia can worsen if it is due to diseases such as Wernicke’s or Wernicke’s syndrome, whose memories can disappear until reaching dozens of forgotten years before the affectation.
Focal or pure retrograde amnesia
This condition is characterized by the lack of anterograde amnesia or to describe functional amnesia, that is, it does not present visible physical lesions. It is used, above all, to describe patients who do not present cognitive impairment beyond amnesia.
Typically, this type of amnesia is due to a lesion in the thalamusa structure highly related to the retrieval of information already established in the cerebral cortex based on its connection with structures related to memory.
global amnesia
Global amnesia is often referred to when the two types of amnesiaboth retrograde and anterograde.
There is a variant called transient global amnesia, which would present as global amnesia but has a short duration. In these cases, patients seem to have periods of absolute confusion and cannot locate themselves in space and time. This type of amnesia is usually caused by lack of blood flow to the brain or situations of extreme anxiety among others.
Psychogenic amnesia
Psychogenic amnesia is one that is caused by factors of psychological origin, without the presence of any lesion or neuronal alteration. The cause of this type of amnesia is due to the presence of or having been subjected to a high level of stress that makes it impossible for them to remember the situation that caused these events. Therefore, it can be called post-traumatic amnesia.
Here, various professionals claim that it is not so much the ability to recover information that has been altered, but rather that the high levels of stress in traumatic moments have interfered with the ability to encode and process information so that it can later be stored.
Retrograde amnesia: treatment
Is retrograde amnesia curable? The answer is not so simple. Amnesia is a complex condition with many possible causes and, therefore, with many different therapeutic approaches. Many of the causes correspond to organic origins and, therefore, the psychological work behind them is often the amnesia assessment itself, to know what characteristics and severity it presents.
The form of evaluation also presents difficulties. Typically, an Autobiographical Memory Interview, which includes family names, personal information, and work history, is used to determine whether a person is experiencing retrograde amnesia and the degree of severity. But since there is no exact way to verify that the information the patient offers is true, it is difficult to determine to what extent and which memories he has lost.
Which is the treatment for retrograde amnesia? There are treatments that try to facilitate the recall of some memories by recounting experiences that the affected person has had and does not remember, but they do not usually have an effect. Most of the time that a person recovers their memories it is from the natural recovery of the injury from brain plasticity.
Cases of retrograde amnesia
We can see two examples of retrograde amnesia in cinema:
- Every day of my life (2012). In this film inspired by real events, a young couple has a traffic accident. Due to a traumatic brain injury, she loses her autobiographical memory of recent years. When she wakes up, she does not know her husband nor remember what her current life is like.
- Secret obsession (2019). In this film, the protagonist suffers an attack by a man who is obsessed with her. After being run over, she wakes up in the hospital and remembers nothing about the attack. Taking advantage of the protagonist’s retrograde amnesia, the person responsible for the attack pretends to be her husband. But she, little by little, is recovering memories of her.
This article is merely informative, at Psychology-Online we do not have the power to make a diagnosis or recommend a treatment. We invite you to go to a psychologist to treat your particular case.
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Bibliography
- Fortunya, OA, Rodésb, JR, & Jatoa, MI (2005). Types of post-ECT amnesia and factors involved. Magazine reviews. Article, (98,458).
- Montoya, MPS, Lancheros, JLA, Gómez, JFO, & Carvajal-Castrillón, J. (2014). Isolated retrograde amnesia: clinical description and neuroimaging of a case. Acta Neurol Colomb, 30(3), 215-221.